Apple

iPhone

iPad

iOS

Jailbreak

Cydia

Today, Google has launched a Web App of their Street View from Google Maps. It can be used on mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Google's Street View Web App works on iOS 5 and iOS 6 from the Mobile Safari and Google Chrome Web browsers, helping to pick up the slack of Apple’s new iOS 6 Maps application, which has a terrible public image at this point in time.

To use the Google Street View Web App, just go to Google Maps from either Mobile Safari or Google Chrome on your iOS device and search for a location. Once the map loads up the location, you will see a new button (circled in red above) that you can tap to launch Street View of the location. Street View doesn’t work everywhere, but it does work almost everywhere.

Street View opens in a different tab from Google Maps in the browser and allows you to see everything in a much more realistic view. Street View aims to show you places the way you can expect to see them if you walked down the roads of these locations. The Web App includes navigation buttons in the interface so you can move around through the street to view places nearby to the location you typed in.

In the top left, Google's Street View has a constant reminder of what the address is of the place you're looking at. When you tap on the 'X' button at the top right of the screen, the Street View tab will close and allow you to return to the Google Maps tab in your Web browser.

Everything runs pretty smooth even on the iPhone 4’s single core processor, so if you have the iPhone 4S or the newer iPhone 5, then the performance will only be superior. Google’s Street View Web App is free to use, so go and give it a try!

Good question. I think Google has every intention of releasing their own application, but they are focusing on web apps first for two reasons:

1. The App Store has a long review process and App Store rules may limit what the app can do.
2. Google has full control over their Web application and there's nothing Apple can say or do to stop what Google does on their own Web app. Many companies have made Web apps to bypass the App Store's rules in the past.

Because apple doesn't want google maps, that's why they dropped them from iOS 6 even though they still had some time left with them, apple wants their own maps...haven't you been reading/watching/listening

Because apple doesn't want google maps, that's why they dropped them from iOS 6 even though they still had some time left with them, apple wants their own maps...haven't you been reading/watching/listening

Apple dropped Google Maps also because Google would not license Apple with Google Maps' turn-by-turn navigation, which Apple wanted. So Apple took their own road into the unknown territory.

Good question. I think Google has every intention of releasing their own application, but they are focusing on web apps first for two reasons:

1. The App Store has a long review process and App Store rules may limit what the app can do.
2. Google has full control over their Web application and there's nothing Apple can say or do to stop what Google does on their own Web app. Many companies have made Web apps to bypass the App Store's rules in the past.

Apple dropped Google Maps also because Google would not license Apple with Google Maps' turn-by-turn navigation, which Apple wanted. So Apple took their own road into the unknown territory.

I agree, Anthony, as to Google's rationale - but surely they must know that a web app will never be as zippy and clean as a native app. That's the reason why I still cling to this buggy ModMyi app over using mobile safari to access the forum. Mobile Safari is just so slow when accessing the forum.